DC Velocity - Burris 2020

JOHN HAGGERTY

Vice President Business Development, Burris Logistics

STEVE TRACEY

Executive Director Center for Supply Chain Research (CSCR), Penn State Smeal College of Business

Burris Logistics operates an expanding network of temperature-controlled warehousing and distribution centers from Florida to Massachusetts, and west to Oklahoma.

The company provides logistics, transportation, and supply chain solutions coast to coast through four distinct business units: Custom Distribution, PRW Plus (Public Refrigerated Warehousing), Trinity Logistics (freight management), and Honor Foods (a redistributor of foodservice products). (www.

burrislogistics.com)

“Producers, distributors, and retailers of fresh produce are finding it necessary to interact with new technology in the supply chain. Compliance with food safety regulations, an increasing need to manage produce quality, and more timely demands for tracking product movement in real time are driving them to seek new solutions.

“In support of this initiative, Burris Logistics recently introduced a cloud-based, real-time produce inspection capability, incorporating a suite of multimodal options such as voice recognition and integrated real-time image capture. Designed to simplify and speed up produce inspection and the negotiation process for produce procurement professionals and suppliers, it enhances product quality outcomes for both retailers and consumers.

“This produce inspection capability was designed from the onset to be blockchain-enabled. It can be digitally integrated into the blockchain when the time is right.

“Burris also designed one of the most customer-interac-
tive digital supply chain portals in the temperature-con-
shipments throughout the United States. This portal is also
ready to be digitally integrated, when the time is right, with
the blockchain.

“There are systems of data exchange already in place in the fresh-food supply chain that support blockchain. For example, the GS1-128 bar code used in the meat industry provides a global standard for exchanging data between different companies, enabling serialization and expiration information to be encoded.

“We are constantly testing ourselves and readying ourselves to partner with those vendors and customers who want to integrate with blockchain. But as a solution provider, we are a participant in the process. We are block-chain-ready, but those suppliers producing the products and those retailers receiving the products need to be the initiators of blockchain.

“Utilizing blockchain to validate temperature-controlled services and product integrity is an extremely valid and attractive option. But only a small percentage of participants in the fresh-produce supply chain, such as Dole and Driscoll’s, provide continuous tracking of products from producer to retailer via blockchain.

“The challenge with blockchain in temperature-controlled foods, and indeed for the entire supply chain, is

The Center for Supply Chain Research connects researchers and professionals from leading organizations within a community that is shaping the future of the supply chain discipline. It is member strong and intellectually active in many facets of supply chain management and the enabling technologies used for collaboration, visibility, and integration. (www.

smeal.psu.edu/cscr)

“If you look at the Gartner Hype Cycle, blockchain is probably somewhere between afraid of expectations and disillusionment.” (The Gartner Hype Cycle provides a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.)

“The underlying technology of blockchain is a distributed
ledger technology and encryption, which has been around
for a while. It got popularized with bitcoin, and although it
uses the same underlying technology, [the supply chain use
case] is almost completely the obverse of how it is used for
bitcoin. In a bitcoin use case, the trans-actors are anony-
mous, and the transactions are public, across a large network
base. In a supply chain, the trans-actors are public, and the
transactions are private, across a very small network base.

You might have 50,000 or more network nodes around a bitcoin transaction, while in a supply chain use case, you are talking about much smaller numbers, maybe 10s or 100s.